A MAN CALLED OVE SWEDEN HANNES HOLM A Man Called Ove tells the familiar story of the Priding himself on his reliability, Ove feels compelled to curmudgeonly old man whose grumpy life is brightened stop killing himself to address each interruption. by forces beyond his control. These forces take the guise Keep in mind that the black humor in this situation of a much younger person who provides a sense of doesn’t arise from any mockery of Ove’s pain over missing purpose for the old hero. A film like this rises or falls his spouse. That is presented as real, understandable pain. not only with its central performance, but also with its Instead, the humor comes from Ove’s stubbornness as ability to engage the viewer’s emotions in a credible, a creature of habit. Perpetually enforcing neighborhood honest fashion. Movies like this tend to get dismissed rules nobody cares about nor adheres to, Ove can’t as “manipulative” because audience sympathy for the resist the opportunity to scold those who violate them. protagonist is at least partially elicited by flashbacks to Yet, for all his crabbiness, there’s a level of selflessness a litany of tragic or unfair past events. But all movies inherent in Ove’s character, a trait he finds infuriating are manipulative by default; the effectiveness of that yet he begrudgingly accepts. His wife, Sonja, played as manipulation is the more valid measurement to inspect. a young woman in the flashbacks by Ida Engvoll, sees On that scale, A Man Called Ove is a morbidly funny and this in the younger version of Ove (Filip Berg), and the moving success. much older Ove acknowledges it after much bitching Adapting Frederick Backman’s Swedish best seller, and griping. It’s almost as if Sonja is sending him writer/director Hannes Holm doesn’t veer too far from interruptions from beyond the grave just so he can have the storytelling structure we’ve come to expect. Instead, an excuse to complain to her like he’s done every day he tweaks expectations with the way he presents the since her passing. This compulsive adherence to routine material, and his grip on the film’s tricky, tragicomic will keep Ove distracted. tone is masterful. For example, several flashbacks are As Ove, Lassgård gives one of the year’s best cleverly presented as the “life flashing before one’s performances. He’s well supported by the other actors eyes” moments triggered by the suicide attempts of Ove (and the aforementioned cat), but this is a rich, complex (Rolf Lassgård). Ove is a widower whose daily visits to performance that is both funny and moving. It would his recently deceased wife’s gravesite end with his verbal have been easy to just let Ove coast by on his amusing promise to join her in the afterlife. His failures of self- grouchiness, but Lassgård lets us see so deeply under annihilation are due more to bad timing than botched that protective exterior. We feel as if we’ve walked a mile attempts — he is constantly interrupted by neighbors or in Ove’s shoes and absorbed his catharsis as our own some distracting event going on in his housing complex. Odie Henderson, RogerEbert.com WRITERS: Hannes Holm & Fredrik Backman CINEMATOGRAPHY: Göran Hallberg MUSIC: Gaute Storaas CAST: Ove Rolf Lassgård | Parvaneh Bohar Pars | Unga Ove (Young Ove) Filip Berg | Sonja Ida Engvoli VOTING FOR THE HANDMAIDEN A 39 | B 33 | C 7 | D 5 | E 1 | Rating 81% | Attendance 92 Next screening | Tharlo | Tuesday 23 January 2018 8.00pm ‘. a confrontation of old and new, of solitude and togetherness, of dreams and reality . .’ Winchester Film Society Presents: Tuesday 23 January 2018 8.00pm For further information, please visit www.winchesterfilmsociety.co.uk.